Vanja #66 wrote: ↑17 Feb 2024, 21:22
If I was Red Bull, this would be my first update. Shrink the rear of the sidepod (quite bulky now, conservative in terms of internal cooling ducts and adequate for these 3 hotter races) and bring down the upper inlet lip. A lot of lift reduction, and drag reduction by also generating thrust on the upper inlet lip. Overall decent efficiency increase. The colours are of course rough estimations of pressure plots
higher, ambient, low, lower
https://i.ibb.co/QdpTkTn/RB-20-evolution.jpg
Considering the surface of these sidepods, this update would be scary. Those who are regularly visiting this forum and have their hand on other cars, don't say you were surprised in a month and a half
Well apparently they will shrink the sidepod - or rather remove it almost entirely!
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/red- ... /10576560/
I feel like, if anyone other than Red Bull were trying this, we would be highly sceptical of its success. Presuming it is actually Mercedes style (and perhaps that presumption is the problem) then it does seem quite risky to pursue a direction that your highly-resourced rival could not get working over the course of two seasons.
Now, of course, the devil is in the details and perhaps they are going for small sidepods but with a different concept entirely, but I’m personally going to remain cautious before proclaiming this another Newey master stroke. I think it’s quite possible this could turn out to be a blunder. Let’s see.